Course 15 of 20 · Emissions and Carbon Desk Academy

Removals & Durability Economics

Stage D, Structured purchase, financing and portfolio specialisation. Level 8 of 10.

The cost and risk economics of durable removal, including reversal risk, buffer pool mechanics and monitoring over long horizons.

119 chapters · 11 modules · every chapter one 8 to 10 minute explainer · builds on: Course 04, Course 07, Course 11

Enrol or enquire See the 119 chapters
How a chapter is delivered

One chapter is one idea taken to the point of use

Each chapter covers one idea to the point where you can use it, and comes two ways: a narrated explainer, and a deep dive audio discussion of around thirty minutes that works the same material at depth.

Self-paced throughout, and the same chapters can be taught as a cohort. Chapters run in order: each one assumes only what the chapters before it taught, and capability belonging to a later course is named and deferred rather than half-covered.

Curriculum

11 modules · 119 chapters

Open any module for its full chapter list, in teaching order.

M0 What Durability Means, and Why It Is Argued About Ch 1-11
  1. Removal and Reduction as Two Different Economic Objects
  2. Durability as a Time Axis, Not a Quality Grade
  3. The Storage Reservoir Is What You Are Buying
  4. Where the Carbon Physically Ends Up
  5. Reversal, Seepage and a Revised Number
  6. The Permanence Argument and Its Assumptions
  7. Equivalence With a Fossil Tonne: The Case and the Objections
  8. Where the Hundred Year Convention Came From
  9. Three Seats a Reversal Loss Can Land In
  10. The Working Vocabulary of Durable Removal
  11. Cost Per Tonne Is Not Price Per Tonne
M1 The Cost Structure of a Removal Tonne Ch 12-23
  1. Decomposing a Delivered Removal Cost
  2. Capital and Operating Cost in a Removal Project
  3. Energy as the Dominant Input in Engineered Capture
  4. The Learning Curve Claim and What It Needs to Be True
  5. Feedstock Opportunity Cost in Biomass Pathways
  6. Land Cost, Tenure and the Cost of Consent
  7. Moving Captured Carbon Dioxide to a Store
  8. Monitoring as a Recurring Cost Line, Not a Fee
  9. The Buffer Contribution as a Cost Line
  10. What It Costs to Push Risk Off the Project
  11. Building a Bottom-Up Removal Cost Stack
  12. Why Two Matching Quotes Are Not Comparable
M2 Land and Biological Storage Economics Ch 24-33
  1. Afforestation Cost Through the Establishment Years
  2. Growth Curves and the Cash Profile They Impose
  3. Soil Carbon: Measurement Cost Against Practice Cost
  4. Coastal and Wetland Storage Economics
  5. Agroforestry and the Farm Income Trade-Off
  6. Biochar Economics From Feedstock to Field
  7. Bio-Oil Injection as a Biological-to-Geological Route
  8. Harvested Wood Products as a Storage Pool
  9. Enhanced Rock Weathering on Agricultural Land
  10. The Argument That Land-Based Cost Curves Steepen
M3 Engineered Capture and Geological Storage Economics Ch 34-44
  1. Direct Air Capture and the Dilution Penalty
  2. Solid Sorbent Against Liquid Solvent Cost Shapes
  3. Where the Heat Comes From, and What It Costs
  4. Bioenergy With Capture and the Host Plant Problem
  5. Mineralisation in Concrete and Aggregate
  6. Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement: Cost and Uncertainty
  7. Site Characterisation as Money Spent Before Certainty
  8. The Storage Lease and the Pore Space Right
  9. Shared Hub Infrastructure and Unit Cost Allocation
  10. Retrofit Against Purpose-Built Capture Economics
  11. Why Engineered Removal Cost Estimates Keep Moving
M4 Reversal Risk: Mechanism and Measurement Ch 45-55
  1. Fire as the Reference Reversal Peril
  2. Pest, Disease and Mortality Events
  3. Drought and Climate Stress on a Storing Forest
  4. Intentional Reversal: Harvest, Clearance and Conversion
  5. Tenure, Governance and Political Reversal
  6. Seepage Pathways From a Geological Store
  7. Well Integrity and Induced Seismicity
  8. Loss Mechanisms in Mineral and Product Storage
  9. Correlated Reversal and Why Spreading Alone Is Not Enough
  10. Estimating a Reversal Rate From Thin Evidence
  11. Expected Loss and Tail Loss on a Stored Tonne
M5 Buffer Pool Mechanics Ch 56-67
  1. What a Buffer Pool Does, and What It Cannot Do
  2. How a Contribution Is Withheld at Issuance
  3. Risk Scoring a Contribution: the Verra AFOLU Tool
  4. Two Voluntary Reversal Accounts Compared
  5. California's Forest Buffer Account as a Compliance Design
  6. A Durable Removal Buffer: the Puro.earth Design
  7. Making a Claim Against the Pool After a Loss
  8. Cancellation and Replacement of Reversed Tonnes
  9. Pool Adequacy and the Solvency Question
  10. The Shared Pool and the Moral Hazard Argument
  11. What Happens as a Pool Is Drawn Down
  12. Reading an Unfamiliar Buffer Rule Book
M6 Insurance, Guarantees and Private Risk Transfer Ch 68-77
  1. Why a Pool and a Policy Are Not Substitutes
  2. Indemnity and Parametric Triggers for a Reversal Policy
  3. Underwriting a Century Peril With Annual Paper
  4. What Drives a Reversal Insurance Premium
  5. A Supplier That Self-Insures From Its Own Pipeline
  6. Parent Guarantees and the Credit Behind the Promise
  7. Escrow, Sinking Funds and Endowment Structures
  8. Public Backstops and Sovereign Assumption of Risk
  9. Layering Buffer, Insurance and Guarantee Without Gaps
  10. What Stays Uninsurable, and What That Costs
M7 Monitoring Across Long Horizons Ch 78-88
  1. The Obligation That Begins When Crediting Ends
  2. Remote Sensing Economics for a Storing Landscape
  3. Ground Plots, Sampling Design and the Cost of Confidence
  4. Monitoring a Geological Store: Pressure, Seismic and Wells
  5. Monitoring Frequency as an Economic Choice
  6. Detection Threshold Against Detection Cost
  7. Funding Monitoring in Year Sixty
  8. Institutional Continuity: Who Is Left to Watch
  9. Evidence Custody Across Decades
  10. Sizing a Monitoring Endowment
  11. Closure, Post-Closure and the End of Monitoring
M8 Time, Discounting and Durability-Adjusted Accounting Ch 89-98
  1. Why the Time Value of a Stored Tonne Is Disputed
  2. Discounting a Storage Service: the Arithmetic
  3. Tonne-Year Accounting: How the Method Works
  4. Tonne-Year Accounting: The Objections
  5. Front-Loaded Issuance Against a Back-Loaded Duty
  6. Durability Discount Factors and Their Assumptions
  7. The Like-for-Like Substitution Argument
  8. Levelised Cost of Removal Over a Storage Horizon
  9. Comparing Pathways on One Durability-Adjusted Basis
  10. Where a Durability Adjustment Stops Meaning Anything
M9 Long-Term Liability and Who Carries It Ch 99-108
  1. Liability as the Mirror Image of the Credit
  2. The Supplier Make-Good Obligation and Its Ceiling
  3. Programme-Level Liability and the Standard Setter's Capacity
  4. Buyer-Retained Exposure After Retirement
  5. State Assumption of Post-Closure Liability
  6. A Forty-Year Promise From a Five-Year-Old Company
  7. Financial Security and Decommissioning Provision
  8. Replacement Without Double Counting
  9. The Durability Register a Desk Keeps
  10. Reading a Liability Chain End to End
M10 Taking a Durable Removal Decision Ch 109-119
  1. A Worked Engineered Removal, Part One: the Cost Stack
  2. A Worked Engineered Removal, Part Two: Loss and Monitoring
  3. A Worked Biochar Purchase, Part One: Delivered Cost
  4. A Worked Biochar Purchase, Part Two: Durability Exposure
  5. Putting the Two Worked Cases Side by Side
  6. The Durability Memo and What It Must Contain
  7. Diligence Questions Only a Removal Raises
  8. Signals That a Durability Claim Will Not Hold
  9. Where This Material Is Deliberately Simplified
  10. What Durability Economics Cannot Decide
  11. Where the Deferred Threads Are Resolved

The brochure gives each of these 119 chapters a paragraph on what it covers and what you can do once you have worked through it.

This is course 15 of twenty

It stands alone, and it is also the entry point to the Emissions and Carbon Desk Academy pathway.

Enrol or enquire See the whole pathway